chhotii

Communicating with your cow orkers in person (...or on the phone, but nobody does that anymore) is like a TCP connection. It's a bit more overhead to set up, but once you're in the same space with someone, there's an ongoing connection. I mean, the other party could totally ignore you, sure, but there's a protocol (!!!??!?) which carries the expectation that they won't. There's acks ('uh-huh') and naks ('what was that again? I didn't get that') so that communication is confirmed before going forward. Formally disconnecting (saying "bye") is a thing, and before that there may be some checking in that everyone's OK.

Communicating with your cow orkers via email or Slack is like UDP. You squirt out a message into the void. Did it go through? Who knows? Is the other party going to read it? Who knows? What are they going to do? ??? Should you re-send the message or would that be annoyingly excessive? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You sent a message hoping that the right thing happens, or that there's some response, but it's merely hope.

So much rage this morning because of foul-ups in communication with cow orkers. My plans got totally screwed up because of 1) me trying to communicate something the "right way" to the office, which was via a Google form which was apparently malfunctioning and 2) mysterious complete ignoring of all my follow-up emails. Still mad about that. Then, confusion in logistics for many-person Zoom scheduling, because of someone's carelessly composed email. In both cases, oh, how much being able to look at someone with puzzlement on my face could've accomplished.